In the digital age, organizations increasingly rely on information technology to store data and provide internal and external services. As the information technology needs of organizations have become increasingly complex, many organizations have turned to third parties to provide computing infrastructure as a service. These “cloud-computing” providers may provide flexibility and scalability to help organizations meet changing needs while managing costs.
Organizations may employ data protection systems to protect against data loss and service interruptions, both to ensure the smooth functioning of organizational operations and to meet increasingly burdensome regulatory requirements that mandate the availability of record systems. The increasingly elaborate information infrastructures employed by organizations (and facilitated by cloud-computing providers) correspond with increased complexity and uncertainty in data protection operations. Cloud-computing providers may provide primitive data protection services for organizations; however, these services may be application unaware and may therefore fail to protect data in a recoverable form, potentially leaving organizations exposed to data loss, service interruptions, and regulatory violations. Furthermore, organizations may be reluctant to entangle data protection systems too deeply with their production applications, whether due to performance concerns or ongoing administrative burdens. Thus, some organizations may simply gamble that they will face no significant data loss events or regulatory audits.
The instant disclosure, therefore, identifies and addresses a need for systems and methods for data protection using cloud-based snapshots.